Spike Tape’s “Spelling Bee” Brings the Laughs While Challenging the Audience to Spell

You could feel the excitement building to a fever pitch before Spike Tape’s production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which played in WestCo Café from April 24–26, 2026. As I waited for the show to begin, the band played jaunty tunes. Much of the crowd scurried over to the table on stage left to sign up to be a part of the show.

“Spelling Bee” is a very different kind of show, and it’s one I have a special fondness for, having performed in it during my past life as an actor. In a sense, the show itself actually functions as a spelling bee—at least for some. Audience participants are invited onto the stage to test how they measure up against the exceptional roster of kid spellers. Throughout the first act of the show, the cast is on their toes while Rona Lisa Peretti (Kira Tilton ’28) and Vice Principal Douglas Panch (Eli Pearl ’28) improvise to determine what words they will get.

When I asked director Sasha Nelson ’28 how they prepared for this audience participation during the rehearsal process, she emphasized that she put them through the wringer.

“During our last rehearsal before invited dress I took it upon myself to be the most difficult, worst audience volunteer imaginable,” Nelson wrote in an email to The Argus. “I recorded from my seat, I screamed over their singing, I took props, I went where I wasn’t supposed to, I tried playing instruments, I refused to leave the stage when I got out…. I kept coming back to the stage. I stole apple juice. Throughout the process, my phone was confiscated, I was basically sat on by Ryan, I was handcuffed, I was removed from the stage. It was amazing. It was also a really fun way for my actors to get out any last nerves on our last rehearsal. That being said, nobody could have been worse than me, so they were ready for anything that came their way.”

Beyond this interactive element, however, “Spelling Bee” is a truly special show, one that is guaranteed to make an audience laugh while also offering very poignant characterization for its talented youngsters. I can attest that the audience was guffawing; even if we weren’t all onstage to participate, it felt like we were all a part of it. Especially in a small space like WestCo Café, it’s easy to feel like the next joke might just be directed at you.

A great amount of the humor came in the small, non-scripted moments when actors would add little beats or gestures that carried the audience from one bit to the next. Actor Brendan Kelso ’27, who played Chip Tolentino, emphasized this as one of the essential things that Nelson brought to them as a director.

“I think what makes ‘Spelling Bee’ so special is how much it encourages improvisation,” Kelso wrote in an email to The Argus. “Through many points of the show, the level of improvisation that the script and Sasha Nelson…encouraged really helped our characters shine in our own unique ways. For instance, when we’re all sitting down watching the other spellers go up, we’re all doing our own little activities, for me it was cleaning my bat, for Loggaine it was spelling on her hands. These little character moments that the director encouraged really helped create a realistic and fully-realized atmosphere for the play.”

In watching the show, you could tell that the actors had ample time to refine their characters’ idiosyncrasies; the performers in “Spelling Bee” were hysterical. Ryan Villano’s ’27 “Magic Foot” was simultaneously perfect physical comedy and genuinely impressive as a feat of movement, while Matilda Rose’s ’28 pronounced lisp was so funny that it had me laughing at jokes before they even happened. When she’s asked to “spell cystitis,” the anticipation of the forthcoming “thithtitith” cracked me up. As Leaf Coneybear, Atticus Rosenthal-King ’27 brought more amazing physical comedy, throwing himself around the stage with reckless abandon and relishing every moment at the mic when he had to spell a South American rodent.

“The script was the perfect outline that allowed the opportunity to make big choices,” Nelson wrote. “I finished blocking the show before Spring Break, so when we got back we just went right into full runs of the show. That allowed my actors to experiment with big choices and really dive into their characters. I did this intentionally so that my actors had time to get to truly know their characters, and their fellow actors, so they get comfortable intermixing the two worlds.”

Despite its uproarious humor, however, “Spelling Bee” is not without moments of extreme tenderness. As Olive Ostrovsky, Gracie Halverson ’28 brought a level of melancholy that reached its apex in the genuinely heartbreaking “I Love You Song,” in which she cries out to her two parents who missed her star turn at the spelling bee. This moment, paired with the shades of romance that develop for her character towards the end, makes “Spelling Bee” more than just a laugh-riot. By the end of the show, I could feel an entire audience smiling at the life-affirming attention to all these characters’ idiosyncrasies that Nelson and the entire cast offered.

Nelson asserted that this love for these characters was one of the principal reasons she wanted to direct this show in the first place.

“Within the comedic story of ‘Spelling Bee’ are the heartfelt tales of individuals who are trying their best in the world…and it is just so Wesleyan,” Nelson wrote. “I thought the students would be a very appreciative audience, and based on the show’s success, I would say it was.”

Louis Chiasson can be reached at lchiasson@wesleyan.edu.

Brendan Kelso is an Assistant News Editor for The Argus.